Southern Cal professor Velasco to deliver Boswell lecture

Sherry Velasco, professor of
Spanish and Gender Studies and chair of the department of Spanish and
Portuguese at the University of Southern California, will deliver the 2012 John
Boswell Memorial Lecture on Oct. 26 in Washington Hall, Room 201.

The lecture, which is free
and open to the public, is entitled “How to Spot a Lesbian in Early Modern
Spain.”

“Years ago I started to investigate how early modern
society understood non-traditional desire as a way to explain the recurring
scenes of same-sex attraction in best-selling literary works and popular plays
during the 16th and 17th centuries,” Velasco said. “After two decades I decided
it was time to publish what I had found in a book-length study.”

The lecture series is named for John Eastburn Boswell
(1947-94), who graduated from William & Mary in 1969, received a Ph.D. from
Harvard in 1975, and taught medieval history at Yale for 19 years. He was the
author of four books, including the award-winning “Christianity, Social
Tolerance, and Homosexuality.”

The Medieval
and Renaissance Studies program and the Lyon G. Tyler Department of History
present the Boswell Memorial Lecture, which is co-sponsored by W&M’s Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GALA) in honor of Boswell’s connection to the
university, contributions to the study of history and love for undergraduate
teaching. The lecture is also supported by the John Boswell Lecture Endowment.

Velasco is the author of “Lesbians in Early Modern
Spain,” (2011), “Male Delivery: Reproduction, Effeminacy and Pregnant Men in
Early Modern Spain” (2006), “The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian
Desire, and Catalina de Erauso” (2000), and “Demons, Nausea, and Resistance in
the Autobiography of Isabel de Jesus, 1611-1682” (1996).

Velasco says there is a distinct correlation between
societal views of lesbians then and now.

“Despite the differing time period and context, early
modern theories -- like many assumptions today -- tended to link female
masculinity with lesbian desire,” Velasco said. “However, what I find most
interesting for the 21st century is the fluid nature of early modern
sex assignment, gender identity, and sexuality – notions that seem to be precursors
to the changing face of lesbian and transgender identities today.”

Her research, Velasco said, enabled her to uncover
the dichotomy between the spiritual community’s assumed need to minimize
scandals created by romantic trysts and “an abundance of religious records
related to regulating affection in the convent.”

Velasco received her Ph.D. in early modern Spanish literature and culture from UCLA in 1992. She is a specialist in early modern
prose and theatre and early modern women’s narrative. Her interests include
gender studies, queer theory and visual cultural studies.